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Boosting the Xero partner program
FAQs

1. What prompted these new additions and improvements to the Xero partner program?

Since launching the Xero partner program in December 2016, we’ve been listening to your experience and what these improvements have meant for your practice. The feedback has been immensely valuable and enabled us to help even more partners to be successful, however they define success.

2. What are the additions to the Xero partner program and what do they mean to me?

Over the past few months, you’ve been telling us that you wanted new ways to upskill your staff and have that investment recognised. You also told us you wanted more ways to earn points and open doors to new status, and to earn Xero champion status. The additions to the Xero partner program will deliver on this feedback.

Two new Xero certifications

We’re recognising the time and effort you put into becoming Xero experts by introducing two new types of Xero certification. These certifications will give you and your practice a distinction in other areas of Xero that you specialise in.

Xero payroll certification will be launching first. This will roll out in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom on the 19 April 2017. Xero payroll certification is designed to provide a specialist understanding of Xero payroll and how it integrates with the core Xero product. United States will have Xero payroll certification available later in April. This certification only applies to the markets where Xero payroll is currently available.

Xero implementation certification will be available later this year, and will provide practical tips on how to set up new clients on Xero. It covers key areas such as segmenting your existing clients and converting them to Xero in the most efficient way. More details on where and when this certification will become available will be shared once confirmed.

Extending Xero champion criteria

The way Xero champion status is earned has been adjusted to accommodate those partners that are showing their commitment, but don’t have the staff numbers to meet eligibility criteria. The introduction of the two new Xero certifications will enable practices of any size to qualify. Instead of requiring two Xero-certified staff (three for Silver and above), your practice will now be eligible for Xero champion status if your practice has two or more Xero certifications (three or more for Silver and above).

At least one staff member must be Xero advisor certified. See the new Xero champion criteria and associated benefits here.

New points for invited-in partners

Later this month, your practice will receive additional points toward partner status where you’re invited into the client subscription as a financial advisor.

Shifting the billing to the business owner creates extra time to focus on what’s important, without having to deal with the associated overhead costs of managing subscriptions.

Transferring the billing to the business owner is easy within MGX and provides a number of other benefits for your practice:

Clients will manage the payments of the organisation and can upgrade or downgrade depending on their needs.

Your practice can focus on the value-add services you can offer a small business.

It will be less work for you to administer Xero subscriptions as you now don’t need to track which clients have each Xero service and manage the on-charging costs for their subscriptions.

There is opportunity to review the pricing model, as your clients are used to paying for accounting fees plus subscriptions.

Reduce the risk of bad debts with writing off costs & subscriptions.

The feedback on this approach has been very positive, as it lets you decide how you wish to serve each client on a case-by-case basis. In every case, you earn points toward your partner status.

3. When do these changes take effect?

The new Xero champion criteria will come into effect with the release of the new Xero payroll certification in April 2017.

The additional points for ‘invited-in’ relationships in Xero Business Edition or Premium Edition (NZ / UK: Payroll Edition) will be effective late April this year. This means that your status may get a boost once our system has recalculated based on the additional points offered with these Xero plans. You’ll be able to check your new partner points in real time in the Xero HQ practice overview, which shows a beautiful summary of your Xero partnership status.